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The book was a bit confusing to keep up with. It was not a continuous story line and it jumped and peeked into different character's lives throughout the book. The book is also written in third person which I am not used to since I usually read books in first or second person. I read this book because it was recommended on a "Every 20 something year old should read" list, but I disagree on it.

kimberleyhklibby
Jul 22, 2014

Girls In White Dresses was a good read. It was written well and with humour. It was a little hard at times to keep track of which character was which because there were so many, however jumping from one character to another did keep the book interesting from start to finish. There was a lot of cursing and drinking and the author seemed to have a dislike of over weight people, both of which I think the book would have been better with out. I enjoyed the book but I think it's one that you will either really love or hate.

this book was a little confusing with all the characters. I felt like I was watching a marathon of sex and the city with new characters in each. it wasn't my favorite book but it entertain and even make me laugh out loud twice.

ReadWendy
Jun 23, 2014

Girls in White Dresses invoked laughter from start to finish. A great read! wc

sass35
Jun 23, 2014

I love the way this book delves into each characters lives,you really get to know the characters so well.that being said there are so many characters i had to try to remember which person that they was talking about.A very good read.

I picked up this book because I was looking for something that I could relate to in terms of frustrations over friends getting married and having kids etc.

The summary on the jacket of this book is not accurate and only reflects a small portion of this book. It's very misleading.

I didn't really like this book and upon reflection actually changed my initial three star review to two stars. The characters weren't very well defined and the changing prespective made it hard to keep track of who was who and what was happening. Names were very similar which added to this difficulty.

Story lines were not seen through to their fullest. You'd get really into the story of a characters break up or budding relationship and in the next chapter when the character had switched you'd hear about the storyline you were interested in in passing and it'd be completely different. Like on one page a character would be going through a horrible break up and 10 pages later in a different chapter she was getting married. It was hard to keep track of the timeline.

And then it just ends. Very unsatisfying.

Lauren's relationship with Mark was particularly distressing because she didn't seem thrilled with it at all and then in the final chapter she says they're probably going to get married.

I didn't really like this. When it pest started it was too confusing to see who was the main character. After several chapters, I realized that there isn't one. This is a collection of a number of girls and their lives over a short period of time. It does a lot of flashbacks and the girls are all somehow connected from the past to the present. The story ended with no real ending leaving me staring at the last page

Anyone who has had to go to multiple friends' weddings will appreciate these intertwined stories. The characters' stories in 'Girls in White Dresses' are not as tightly intertwined as Close's second novel 'The Smart One', but it is still an enjoyable read.

This book claims to be a novel, but it's really a series of short stories, all concerning a clique of girls from Philadelphia who get jobs (mostly) in New York. They may not be cheerleaders exactly, but they seem to share a similar sort of mentality, being privileged, well-educated, pretty girls who get jobs in areas like publishing, and when they don't, sourly contemplate how these are "not the kind of people (they are) supposed to be around". The men they date are two-dimensional and described in terms of their physical attractiveness or lack thereof (making this rather like a lot of novels by male authors, I suppose). One of the least pleasant chapters concerns a member of their set who will only go out with ugly men. Another woman wails when she is set up with an overweight date: "What about me says, Set me up with an obese person?"

Two or three of the short stories have genuine humour and show our protagonists in a more sympathetic light. One, entitled "Showers", is a neat illustration of the giddy excess and embarrassing silliness of pre-wedding rituals. Another, "Button", follows a young woman's underground power struggle with her mother-in-law. Close does best when she writes about the girls as children, or when they interact with children. This is when they come across as real human beings, perhaps because these women are nowhere near growing up. By the end of the book, there is no sense that they have developed any further than the people they were at the beginning.

Oh, I might be missing the point. Perhaps I'm failing to notice devilishly clever social satire, but the fact is, none of these women are appealing, hold my interest, nor resemble anyone I would care to meet in real life.